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Why Bother With DRM?
Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy recently spoke with Gamasutra about their efforts to move the games industry away from restrictive DRM. Despite the fact that both have had their own troubles with piracy, they contend that overall piracy rates aren't significantly affected by DRM — and that most companies know it. Instead, the two suggest that most DRM solutions are still around to hamper a few more specific situations. Quoting:
"'Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy,' Carmel explains. 'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.' ... 'I believe their argument is that while DRM doesn't work perfectly,' says Wardell, 'it does make it more difficult for someone to get the game for free in the first five or six days of its release. That's when a lot of the sales take place and that's when the royalties from the retailers are determined. Publishers would be very happy for a first week without "warez" copies circulating on the Web.'"
Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy
I don't know who that is but a few days ago I submitted a story on an interview with Sony's CEO:
In an interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia this month, Sony CEO and chairman Howard Stringer revealed an interesting point about open technologies: 'Customers will refuse to accept it unless the technology is open. Youth in particular really dislikes closed technologies, closed systems and the like. I think the failure of AOL LLC of the US is good evidence of this. When the Internet was just beginning to spread, AOL boosted its subscriber base by providing special services only to its customers. After a while, though, customers began rebelling, complaining that they weren't children. Because AOL wanted to keep them locked up in a narrow portion of the immense Internet cosmos, open technology was created. Sony hasn't taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads. This approach, however, created a problem: customers couldn't download music from any Websites except those that contracted with Sony. If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple Inc of the US.' He then mentions that Sony has a chance to provide something that Apple can't. Sounds like somebody should inform him of DRM-free iTunes. However when asked about customer confusion over too many open technologies, he claims that the customer will always like choice so the more the better.
Didn't get published so I thought I'd post it here as evidence that even the music distribution companies are saying, "Why bother with DRM?" Not surprising now that Amazon and iTunes are doing it though. I predict everyone will eventually pull their heads out of their asses, it just will take some longer than others.
My work here is dung.
So, the purpose is not to prevent piracy, but to prevent multiple legal resales of games ... which would only result in further illegal piracy.
Sounds like a winning argument to me...
How does this even make sense? GameStop doesn't sell used -PC- games, which is what this "limited install" DRM is made for. Hard to resell a game with a serial code.
I'm no lawyer either, but I believe that only applies to trademarks, not copyrights.
You're thinking of trademarks. You have to defend trademarks or you lose it. Copyright is yours to enforce at any time unless you give it away.
They're defending thier IP in the eyes of the shareholders. Every public company has an obligation to its shareholders, if the current command structure lets pirated copies leak out from every hole, the shareholders might get new company leaders.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
DRM doesn't bother me nearly as much as stuff like Steam and the death of the second hand market. Can you imagine how difficult it will be to bring a game to your friends' house to play?
"Hey, Ron, it's Steve. Since we're going to hang out tomorrow, I suggest you start downloading Butt Zappers 2 now. It should take up about 20 GB of your hard drive space."
"OK, what's your Live username and password?"
"It's XXXXXX and XXXXX. My credit card's on that account, don't use it to download a bunch of games like you did last time, okay bro?"
"Sure dude, but what if this puts me up over my bandwidth cap, you'll pay me back, right?"
"I guess."
"Wait a minute, I don't have any room on my hard drive left."
"So, just delete some of your old stuff. You can always download it later."
"Are you gonna pay for me to download all that stuff too?"
"Dude, I knew we should have gotten Playstation, Sony made a deal with Comcast and PSN downloads don't count against the cap."
"Yeah, and maybe we'd actually be able to download it. Looks like the Butt Zappers server is slammed right now."
Honestly, if they try to foist that stuff on us, I'll just stick with the old, disc-based systems.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
This struck me as a hypocritical position on the part of those game publishers. Either IP is property or it is not. If it is property, then there should be no restrictions allowed on whether or how frequently it can be resold (i.e. no one tries to stop you from reselling your car or your house). If it is not property, then there should be no artificial scarcity surrounding it which would also make this or any other DRM an inappropriate practice.
It should be obvious that what they seem to want is a level of control that is unavailable to the manufacturers of any other sort of good or service. It's surprising that anyone takes them seriously. Much lively debate occurs on the fine nuances of copyright law while missing the point that what they want is to be singularly special, to wield powers unavailable to other industries. That's known as the inability to see the forest for all the trees. That's why I think it's a phony debate, just like most media discourse surrounding what should be regarded as power grabs. They are aiming at an unreasonable amount of control over the marketplace in the name of copyright.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
When I was a starving student (and associate engineer struggling to pay rent), I had a very slim budget, and would play "warez" until I could save/beg/borrow enough to buy the full versions, and I would *unless* the game sucked anyway. Now that I can afford software and music, I make it a point not to pirate copyrighted info, but I will still "evaluate" music before I buy it from MPAA publishers. And most people I know feel the same way.
So, the real product that DRM protects is the "Turd in a Can," a product that the consumer would not pay for if they knew beforehand that they were buying crap.
I can see the fnords!
Uh, no it's not. Your account, yes. Your PC, no. You can only play online with the same copy from one place at any one time, but it's by no means locked to your PC.
Also, insert generic Slashdot joke re: girlfriends/children #46 here.
Really, if we distill the arguments for DRM down far enough, it becomes clear that the idea is to try to work around the First Sale Doctrine and kill the second-hand market.
Let us consider, for a moment, a DRM-loaded game from the past year.
Spore.
Its DRM was considered by some to be so limiting that some people simply never played the game. People were exasperated that, at release, it allowed only one user account per copy. That installs couldn't be "restored" by uninstalling the game (many of these things have been added since).
OK, so all that said, copies of Spore were still readily available for download a week prior to release on torrent sites all over the world. Despite cumbersome DRM, that in some cases prevented actual customers from being able to extract full enjoyment from the product they purchased, anyone that wanted a DRM-free copy could still have gotten one prior to the release of the game.
Lesson: It. Doesn't. Work.
Maybe...maybe it prevents someone from taking the game to a friend's house and installing it, or the like. But it isn't preventing wide-scale piracy, even during that "critical first week".
If you don't defend a trademark, you can lose it. I'm not sure how this applies to copyright.
That's why RMS doesn't like the term "Intellectual Property", by the way. It's a vague concept that combines three very different bodies of law: Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights.
For that matter, think about just about every copyleft-style license -- GPL, Creative Commons, etc -- do those become invalid just because people are copying them? No.
If such a law exists at all (for copyright, instead of trademarks), I would think it would have to do with actually legally defending your copyright -- as in, when you're aware of the vendor down the block selling burned pirate copies, you should sue him. It absolutely has nothing to do with taking the law into your own hands with DRM.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hard to resell a game with a serial code.
Yes, yes it is. Especially if the game has an online multi-player component. But what about for single-player games? That's where limited-install makes sense for the developers and why Gamestop has a hard time with used PC software.
I've got Stardock games on multiple computers right now, all at the current version, quite easily. I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Hell, the EULA explicitly says you can have it on more then one computer at once (two in Demigod's case).
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
(...I'd like to know more about this Butt Zappers game.)
I can see the fnords!
GameStop doesn't sell used PC games because they have install restrictions. PC game producers admit to using said restrictions to limit or eliminate the resale value that businesses such as GameStop capitalize on. If these restrictions weren't in place, used PC games would have resale value, so GameStop would (in theory anyway) be interested in selling them.
I agree that a case filed by GameStop doesn't make much sense... PC game producers aren't legally obligated to follow GameStop's business model. On the other hand, a class action case on the behalf of PC game consumers may be in order if these restrictions and corresponding elimination of resale value weren't fully disclosed prior to sale.
I've been into gamestop before and opened their 'empty' cases to find serial numbers inside. Once I've something like that there is almost nothing keeping me from going to say 'battlenet' and registering that copy of warcraft as my own. They even let me download the game from their site as well. I never buy PC games from gamestop simply because you can't be sure someone hasn't already nipped the serial number from it.
Pirating the game later has the same effect as buying the game second hand as far as the publisher is concerned, but by pirating it you don't support the second hand market, which benefits the publisher. I might see such practices justified for games that break the second hand market, but if they have no/reasonable DRM, I can't say I entirely agree with you.
I think you've got that backwards. By buying used games (instead of pirating), you give money to people who bought the new game, reducing the effective cost for them, and making it possible for them to buy more new games. Say I have $50 to spend, and used games sell for $25. So I can buy one game for $50, you pirate the same game, that's it. Or I buy a game for $50, three months later you buy it used for $25, I buy another game for $50, three months later you buy it used for $25, so it cost me the same $50, but the manufacturer got $100. So buying used games _does_ support the manufacturer by making new games less costly.
First Sale Doctrine much?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
In addition to the above comments noting that it is just tied to your account, not your PC, note that the GOO system allows you to deactivate a game on your account and transfer it to another. 1 minute spent googling "transfer stardock games" would have found this out for you. Try doing a little research next time your tempted to make assumptions about how something works that you have no knowledge of.
"same effect as buying the game second hand as far as the publisher is concerned"
The publishers need to focus on games that have replay value (so more people will want to keep them) and being competitive (adaptive pricing). The reason used video game stores exist is that many people aren't willing to pay $50 to $60 for a new game.
Now if PC game companies were more aggressive with their pricing then they could compete with the used market. Just look at console games "Greatest Hits", "Players Choice", and "Platinum" titles. If a game has a 2nd hand market, many publishers will re-release the game at $20 to $30, taking the wind out of the 2nd hand market (why pay $17.49 for a used copy of game X when you can get it new for $20!).
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
I think 2D Boy gives publishers more credit then they are due. I think publishers ARE stupid over all. I think they really do think they can win this war. They think "Well if we just keep getting better DRM, we'll find something they can't crack." I think they also believe that DRM does give good ROI, which is to say that the increase in profits is greater than the cost of the DRM. I really believe that most publishers are stupid about this, just like the music publishers.
The problem is they see these big numbers of copies out there and get dollar signs in their eyes. They think "Man, if we had been paid for each of those copies we'd be RICH!" They are right too. Games are heavily copied. If every person who ever downloaded a copy instead paid for the game, they'd probably make 5-10x the money. What they don't consider, of course, is that not everyone would. There's a lot that people will take for free that they won't take at any price, much less a $50 price. You offer it for free, they say "Yes I'd like that." You want any money for it, they'll pass.
However, greed is able to short-circuit logic for many people I don't think the people at publishers are any different. They see the money they could be theoretically making and stop thinking logically about it.
Also the DRM companies push their products heavily, of course. They reassure the publishers "Oh ya, our DRM is really effective it'll get you a bunch more sales but if you DON'T use it, we'll you'll go to the poor house because nobody will buy your game!"
Personally, I think the numbers on the Bittorrent sites tell the real story. Demigod sure as hell got downloaded a lot, because people were very interested in it. However, Spore got downloaded even more, because even more people were interested in it. The difference DRM had on downloading in that case? Zero. People downloaded if they wanted to.
Yeah, so every time some idiot hits the telephone pole the next block down or an idiot builder augers through the neighborhood cable line or my cable company has a hardware problem I can't watch TV, I can't surf the internet, and I also can't play any game that I've paid for? I don't use Comcast any more for this and other reasons but they charged me for a full month of service despite my cable being out for over a week. Do I get a discount on my service if I can't access this software service for a week through no fault of my own? Probably not, especially if it is some other company's fault.
Also the moment I have to pay every time I open up a text document is the moment I stop using computers at home period and I'm a developer. There is no reason for every company in the world to nickle and dime me. I won't pay a monthly subscription to play a game I already paid $50 for and I won't pay a monthly subscription to do basic things with my computer. I also wouldn't pay for a single listening instance of a song.
If you're talking about a LAN party, not all games really require you to buy a copy for everybody. Demigod (most recent example I have) lets you use one copy for everybody on the LAN. It even says you're allowed to do that in the game's manual.
It seems like it's next to impossible to find out what the policy is before actually buying the game, but some games are friendly towards LAN players. :)
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Get real. When was the last time a popular game* was released and it wasn't available that day via P2P? In fact you often see them days BEFORE release on P2P already cracked and ready to go.
I remember when Spore came out the first day or two had something like 30,000 seeders on TPB. Even right now there's about 15k people seeding both the star trek movie and the latest episode of fringe ... and as many people downloading. And this is just ONE tracker. It's actually faster to download the game/movie than drive to the store and buy it half of the time.
Any software company that deludes themselves into believing DRM stops piracy by any significant amount delusional. It's all about preventing resale...which is still detrimental to the customer. Stupid how a library can rend DVDs, CDs and books but somehow software managed to squeak in such an exception.
* Excluding exclusively online games (aka WoW, etc.)
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
The Steam hate might have held some ground in 2002/03 while angry Counter-Strike players still clung to WON.net, but times have changed. Unless you're regularly blowing all of your monthly bandwidth on torrenting "linux isos", you can stomach a Steam game download or two with even the most draconian ISP.
"It's XXXXXX and XXXXX. My credit card's on that account, don't use it to download a bunch of games like you did last time, okay bro?"
Steam doesn't persistently store your credit card information. I'd be weary of any digital delivery service that did.
"Can you imagine how difficult it will be to bring a game to your friends' house to play?"
Okay, okay, let's just say your pal doesn't want to waste the bandwidth or time on downloading; that's fine. So, I don't know - as difficult as opening Steam up, navigating to "Backup games", burning it to a disc and walking it over? Personally, I can't imagine a mortal among us to tackle this Herculean errand.
"Wait a minute, I don't have any room on my hard drive left."
Gone are the days of juggling CDs and game installations to ensure you have 100MB of space left in order to pay tribute to the Windows 95 swap deity. If you're using an even remotely modern HDD of an even half-acceptable size (heck, even grandma's new HP for checking chain e-mails and visiting smileycentral comes with a 300GB drive these days), yeah, if you don't have enough space to install something from Steam? Not only are your computing practices more than likely idiotic to begin with, but you can most certainly deal with uninstalling some junk. Or hell, you've just proven you need it - so go buy a second HDD.
But you know what? The fact is, Gabe Newell, Valve co-founder, has gone on record mocking conventional DRM and stated, paraphrasing, that the mission of Steam is to make buying games, storing games, and accessing games easier and more convenient for the customer. Their content servers are widespread, well-maintained, and frankly - your aside about the "Butt Zappers server being slammed" is moot. Even the dreaded Slashdot phenomenon is a drop in the pond to Steam's full throughput. The recent roll out of of Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 content packs have proven testament to this.
The only real complaint of yours that stands is with respect to re-selling your games - but really, tough shit. It's probably the only real remaining trade-off of digital delivery, so just consider that you're trading resale value for a few dollars in publishing costs the next time you buy a Steam game a bit cheaper than the brick and mortar box cost.
As a final note to answer any forthcoming "but, but, but, what-if!?" conjecturing, Valve has stated repeatedly that in the event they close up shop, a means for us customers to retain our purchases will be provided. If you have to crusade against digital delivery, don't go after Steam.
Case in point:
Fire hoses do not work against pirates equipped with rocket propelled grenades.
Fire hoses have not be tested on thieves. EA may be working on the technology.
DRM has not been tested on pirates. The Coast Guard may be working on the technology (You pirate, you can no longer listen to your ipod! Bwahahaha!)
DRM does not work on thieves.
Shooting them in the head works on pirates.
Shooting them in the head is against the rules of engagement for thieves in this class. EA may be working to change that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I can't speak for everyone, but I don't want to connect to a server if I don't have to. Most of my favorite games are primarily single player (ie. Civilization). A lot of them have a multiplayer component, but there are tons of people that never touch that.
For games that are primarily multiplayer, I agree that a small fee for the initial install along with a monthly fee is reasonable, but not for single player games. I think this is dangerous territory too. It could lead to separate single/multiplayer editions where they get to charge you extra for small additions to a game.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
The solution for single player games is just as easy. Make it easier to get the game than to pirate it. The assumption here is that you're not connected to the network, now you have to go to a store (game stop) or whatever to buy the game. Make it easy (less expensive).
If they have a connection to the internet, but the game is single player (eg Civ), then make it available online even cheaper than retail.
Who cares about finding a Torrent or cracked version that isn't spyware/virus plagued when it is just as easy to go get it from the source?
Pirates only operate where it pays to pirate, and the commodity is scarce. If you offer a good product and service at a fair price, you'll have customers. Yes, there will be people who STEAL (yes I said steal) the game to play, but that is not the software company's problem. They are going to do it anyways.
The point is get to a point of "why would I need to Crack and Torrent something that is so easy to get from SOFTGAMECO?"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Only after it's too late to do anything about it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It's not even that he's unaware of DRM-free iTunes. If that were the only problem, I'd be quite happy to inform him of an opportunity that I simply don't see being exploited right now:
Purely web-based purchasing, with an open API.
Amazon MP3 is pretty cool. Better than iTunes, because I can use any program I want to play the music, and because there's a Linux client, I've now set my mother up to purchase music that way, and have it automatically imported into Amarok.
But it could be so much better.
Purely web-based would mean no client I have to download and figure out. An open API, or even a decent enough web interface, would mean I could write an Amarok plugin -- be able to listen to a preview, and buy it right there, just like (I assume) iTunes does. Others could write Songbird plugins. It's possible they could even make a deal to incorporate it into iTunes.
Protection would be relatively easy: Just a temporary URL, and it'd be about as good as Amazon MP3 is right now.
The problem is, of course, that he doesn't get it at all.
A lot of people thought Sony's content download service was doomed, but it's in a pretty good place right now in the form of the PlayStation Network, available to PS3 users for network gaming, video, etc. The DRM is based on Marlin, an open scheme developed by consumer electronics companies and other companies.
So close, and yet so far...
So, I'm guessing to this guy, "open" is just a buzzword. He seemed to have a basic grasp of what it means, and then he went and claimed a DRM scheme could be "open".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Here's the problem: That $50 price includes the game's value at resale. If the resale value is $35, then you're diminishing the value of the original purchase price by making it impossible for a 2nd buyer to use. Simple, basic economics. So, if you remove that functionality, some of which justifies the $50 price, the game is no longer worth $50, because the value of its resale is now gone.
So, the result of adding DRM to your game and not lowering your price to reflect the diminished value is that your game now appears overpriced. Good job, you've now guaranteed yourself flagging sales because of greed.
Imagine if car companies programmed their cars to self-destruct if sold to a second buyer. It's ridiculous. The argument that second hand sales take money out of the pocket's of the producers? Ridiculous also. Just stop it, you idiotic, economically ignorant publishers. Focus on making a damn good game, one that's good enough to purchase in the first place.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"